New Article: Goldsmith, Israel, Palestine, and Queer/Feminist Ecologies

Goldsmith, Mitch. “From the River to the Sea: Israel, Palestine, and Queer/Feminist Ecologies.” UnderCurrents 19 (2015): 17-26.

 

URL: http://currents.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/currents/article/view/40251 [PDF]

 

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide an ecofeminist and queer critique of Israeli aggression towards and occupation of Palestine in three parts. Firstly, providing a critical analysis of tropes surrounding the creation of the Israel including early policies relating to land and afforestation. Secondly, by revealing how these tropes about the founding of Israel expose racist understandings about the supposed nature of Palestinians and Arabs (as backwards, queered and so on) and Thirdly, how these projections in the two previous sections about Israeli ingenuity and the supposed natural inferiority of Palestinians and Arabs informs current ecological mal/development in Israel and Palestine.

 

 

CFP: Homonationalism in Hebrew (NAPH, June 2016)

I am looking for participants in a panel about Israeli homonationalism for the 2016 National Association of Professors of Hebrew conference (Providence, RI, June-21-23).

Please contact me at segalo[at]cofc. edu

Oren Segal, College of Charleston

Homonationalism in Hebrew: Representations in Literature, Drama, and Cinema

Following Jasbir Puar’s 2007 conceptualization of homonationalism, it became fashionable in Queer Studies to explore the various ways in which mainstream gays foster patriotism in order to assimilate into Western societies. Only a few scholars address this issue in the Israeli context, prominently among them Aeyal Gross, but, except of Raz Yosef, who examines this phenomenon in Israeli cinema, the conversations about the Israeli configuration of homonationalism are limited to the Social Studies perspective. Aiming to widen the scope of the discussion, this panel intends to explore cultural representations in literature, drama, and cinema of the unique Israeli fusion of nationalism and homonormativity. Since homonormativity supports and maintains the national structures that discriminate against individuals that fail to achieve or intentionally reject the narrow terms of acceptability, this panel also wishes to pay close attention to representations of non-normative sexualities and non-binary identities. This panel will provide another dimension to the current debate about homonationalism and offer the possibility to enrich it with questions about the cultural backgrounds of the Israeli manifestation of gay patriotism.

New Book: Fuchs, Israeli Feminist Scholarship

Fuchs, Esther, ed. Israeli Feminist Scholarship. Gender, Zionism, and Difference. Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2014.

More than a dozen scholars give voice to cutting-edge postcolonial trends (from ecofeminism to gender identity in family life) that question traditional approaches to Zionism while highlighting nationalism as the core issue of Israeli feminist scholarship today.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction. Israeli Feminist Scholarship: Gender, Zionism, and Difference

Esther Fuchs

Chapter One. The Evolution of Critical Paradigms in Israeli Feminist Scholarship: A Theoretical Model

Esther Fuchs

Chapter Two. Politicizing Masculinities: Shahada and Haganah

Sheila H. Katz

Chapter Three. The Double or Multiple Image of the New Hebrew Woman

Margalit Shilo

Chapter Four. The Heroism of Hannah Senesz: An Exercise in Creating Collective National Memory in the State of Israel

Judith T. Baumel

Chapter Five. The Feminisation of Stigma in the Relationship Between Israelis and Shoah Survivors

Ronit Lentin

Chapter Six. Gendering Military Service in the Israel Defense Forces

Dafna N. Izraeli

Chapter Seven. The Halachic Trap: Marriage and Family Life

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari

Chapter Eight. Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel

Nitza Berkovitch

Chapter Nine. No Home at Home: Women’s Fiction vs. Zionist Practice

Yaffah Berlovitz

Chapter Ten. Wasteland Revisited: An Ecofeminist Strategy

Hannah Naveh

Chapter Eleven. Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Rift

Henriette Dahan-Kalev

Chapter Twelve. Scholarship, Identity, and Power: Mizrahi Women in Israel

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

Chapter Thirteen. Reexamining Femicide: Breaking the Silence and Crossing “Scientific” Borders

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Chapter Fourteen. The Construction of Lesbianism as Nonissue in Israel

Erella Shadmi

Chapter Fifteen. From Gender to Genders: Feminists Read Women’s Locations in Israeli Society

Hanna Herzog

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

 

Purchase from publisher: https://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/fucisr

New Article: Naber and Zaatari, Feminist and LGBTQ Activism in the Context of the 2006 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon

Naber, Nadina and Zeina Zaatari. “Reframing the War on Terror: Feminist and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Activism in the Context of the 2006 Israeli Invasion of Lebanon.” Cultural Dynamics 26.1 (2014): 91-111.

 

URL: http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/26/1/91

 

Abstract

This article seeks to expand the kinds of questions we ask about the diverse militarized campaigns referred to collectively as the “war on terror,” the grassroots resistance to these wars, and efforts committed to creating a world without destruction and killing. Shifting the focus of this feminist critique of war away from the center of power (the empire) to the everyday lives of feminist and queer activists living the war on terror from the ground up, this article examines a distinct feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social movement that worked to respond to and resist the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. We argue along with our interlocutors in Lebanon that asymmetrical systems of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and family are entangled in the historical conditions of transnational capital, empire, and war, and necessitate an intersectional approach that refuses to impose false binaries or hierarchies on a complex social reality. We conclude by arguing the importance of reframing the war on terror and reimagining feminist and LGBTQ policies as a critique of the post-racial discourse, beyond dominant imperialist and nationalist discourses, which are exclusionary, sexist, and homophobic in different ways.